


Monochrome, The Not Colors

by aliteraryaddict



Category: Percy Jackson and the Olympians & Related Fandoms - All Media Types, Percy Jackson and the Olympians - Rick Riordan, The Heroes of Olympus - Rick Riordan
Genre: AU, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, F/F, F/M, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-09-08
Updated: 2017-09-18
Packaged: 2018-12-25 10:50:06
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 3,195
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12034350
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/aliteraryaddict/pseuds/aliteraryaddict
Summary: summary: white is often associated with light, goodness, purity, and innocence. black is often associated with death and grief.





	1. Part One - White

**Author's Note:**

> I do not own any of the characters, all Percy Jackson and Heroes Of Olympus characters belong to Rick Riordan.

 

You knew from the moment you met him that you would love Jason Grace until the day you died.

* * *

It gets confusing, because the first time you met him wasn’t actually the first time you met him, it was _mist_.

Which didn’t make sense. You could remember meeting him at Wilderness School, the way his smile had made you feel all warm and fuzzy the same way your mom’s used too. He had held his hand out and introduced himself, the dork, with that cheesy smile and you just _knew_.

It was like parts of your life fell into the place after meeting him, as if everything was as it was meant to be. Weeks felt like years, and after a month you felt as though you had known the blond boy for your whole life. You learn that he likes brownies that are almost fresh out of the oven, crisp on the outside and still somewhat gooey in the middle. He wears these dorky black rimmed glasses when you’re alone in your room together and you’ve seen the small mole on his left foot. He has these tiny scars over his body, but he doesn’t like to talk about them much, and you don’t push.

He knows that you like to fog up the bathroom mirrors when you shower, that you sleep in Hello Kitty pajama pants, that you enjoy trashy Disney original movies no matter how terrible the acting is. He has seen you bent over your desk messing with one of your inventions, eyebrows pushed together in a rare moment of unbroken focus. He knows that you always have to be moving- whether it be bouncing your knee or tapping out words in morse code on the edge of your desk.

He joins in with your random dance sessions to Taylor Swift’s songs, and not the trashy pop ones either, but true jams like “Just Another Picture to Burn” and “Our Song”. You learn that there is nothing that makes you happier than belting your heart out to “I won’t Say I’m in Love” and “Go the Distance” alongside him, both of you in your boxers and loose-fitting shirts fresh out of the shower.

He isn’t your best friend. Piper’s your best friend, and while you know it’s possible to have more than one best friend, the way you feel about the two of them is very different than the way you feel about the half-Cherokee girl. You tell him, whispering it in the dark night when you think he’s asleep and can’t hear you.

He isn’t asleep, and he can hear.

He tells you he heard you after one of your hikes, the one where you slipped into the river and cut your ankle and had to be escorted back to the bus where the first aid kit had been left.

Jason takes you back by himself- carrying you on his back, ignoring your protests (I’m fine, really, I’m pretty heavy Jase)- and you try not to think about how sturdy he feels, how his muscles contract while he moves, how he could probably hear how frantically your heart hammered in your chest. He set you down carefully on one of the seats, leaning over you to grab the first aid kit that’s above your head. His shirt lifts up, and you look down at your lap, hands twisting nervously around one another. He leans down in front of you and rolls up your wet jeans, carefully removing your shoe and sock and placing them on the floor beside him. His fingers brush over the angry, oozing gash on your ankle and you wince. He is gentle, cleaning it before opening one of the large, square band aids over it and smoothing it over the cut.

He held onto your ankle for a few moments after that, not looking at you as he tells you that he heard you. Something sticks in your throat, and you’re not sure if you’re going to pass out or vomit. Maybe you can pass out and choke on your puke. “I like you more than a best friend too,” he blurts, and he’s moving faster than you can react to. His lips smash into yours painfully, and foreheads smack together, but you both break the kiss with nervous and goofy grins. When you get back to the school for dinner Piper raises an eyebrow knowingly at your intertwined hands but says nothing.

Nothing much changes, except you cuddle when you watch movies and the two of you get better at kissing. You go to bed, feeling giddy and happy for the first time since your mom died.

Then all of the sudden you’re being attacked by angry storm spirits, Coach Hedge is a half-goat man and ends up getting abducted, your boyfriend dives over the edge of the Grand Canyon after your best friend, you’re crash landing into a lake in the middle of winter, and your life-long-absent father is a Greek god. Everything from Nevada feels so far away. The worst part about all of it? Jason doesn’t remember anything about you or the past semester. He doesn’t remember Taylor Swift jam sessions, making friendship bracelets, crying over The Notebook together. He forgets you, forgets being in love with you, and everything hurts.

* * *

They try to cheer you up. It doesn’t work.

Annabeth explains to you that he hasn’t _forgotten_ you, just that he was never _in love_  with you to begin with. You think that hurts more than being forgotten. Those memories that were just so _real_ \- so vivid that you could taste Jason on your lips, feel him on your skin- were just illusions woven by a goddess with what must be a twisted sense of humor. You feel angry and the only thing you can think to do is withdraw, focus on finding and fixing up that broken dragon you’d heard so much about so you can go on your quest with your imaginary boyfriend and best friend.

Piper tries to fix the damage Annabeth has done to you. She runs her finger through your dark, unkempt curls when Jason is asleep on the back of Festus, telling you that just because it _wasn't_  didn't mean _it could never_  be. You both know it's weak, but you appreciate her attempt to cheer you up.

It’s even worse with Jason. He’s awkward, unsure of how to act around you, let alone reassure you. For all you know he’s not actually into boys. He always approaches you with this nervous kind of cautiousness that makes you want to scream and cry and rip your hair out all at the same time. He has a hard time maintaining eye contact, stealing glances at you as if he is afraid he might break you by looking at you somehow. When you’re in the sewer you find yourself laying with your back to him, crying silently as you wonder how something that once felt so perfect hurt so much.

* * *

 

There’s no time to focus on Jason Grace and his pretty blue eyes and perfect white smile when you’re trying to take down Gaea, something you are grateful for until it is over too fast and you must face him.

You don’t have to face him right away. You spend some time with Calypso on her island, away from the rest of the world, recovering from the trauma you’ve experienced through the last year with her help. For the first time since discovering you are a demigod you feel light and free, and you find yourself never wanting to leave. You think that if you had never known a certain son of Jupiter you might have loved her and stayed on Ogygia until your dying days.

You were ruined now, perhaps forever, by a blond boy who made you feel like you were filled with electricity. He was ingrained into you now, how he spoke with a slight lisp, the way his scar above his lip seemed to change when he smiled, the way he laughed with his whole stomach instead of his chest. You told her about him one night. She listened, and when your voice shook she placed her hand on your shoulder in reassurance.

“Enough Leonidas,” Calypso says one day, breaking the comfortable silence. You stopped walking, looking over at her confused. “You can’t hide here forever.”

“I’m not-“

“You _are_. Listen, I understand that when you were fighting Gaea you didn’t have to worry about how you felt, didn’t have to talk about it because you were too focused on saving the world from ending. You’re scared of being around him now because since your lives are no longer in immediate danger you don’t have an excuse to avoid talking about whatever it is you have with Jason. You’ve been putting off going back because it’s easier to be here than confront how you feel, admit it.”

A few weeks later you take her back to camp with you, stomach twisting itself into knots the entire way there.

You hope she can find someone worthy of her someday, someone who can love her the way you can’t.


	2. Part Two - Black

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I do not own any of the characters, all Percy Jackson and Heroes Of Olympus characters belong to Rick Riordan.

You know from the moment you come to on the back of a bus in the middle of nowhere-Nevada, no memories of who you are and a small Latino boy wrapped around you like a pretzel as he talked in rapid fire, that you were in trouble.

You try to tell him and the girl with the pretty kaleidoscope eyes that you don’t know who they are, that you don’t even have an idea who _you_  are.

They thought it was a joke, but you couldn’t see how it was funny.

The boy- who teasingly introduced himself as Leo Valdez, your _boyfriend_ \- detangles himself from you, freeing your limbs as he leans forward to continue whatever conversation he’d been having with the girl, Pipe Cleaner or something like that. His hand was warm against your thigh, and you feel nauseous.

* * *

Everything is moving too fast. One second you’re at the Grand Canyon and the next your making a forced landing and fumbling to get out of a lake in New York. You are cold and tired, and for the first time your two ‘companions’ realize that you’re telling the truth about the memory loss. The boy with the crazy hair and wicked smile looks at you as though he’s lost something and you can’t help but feel a bit sorry for him.

You’re whisked away to a three-story house painted a baby blue with a white trim, the Big House, and meet with the head of the camp. Chiron seems to know more about you than he lets on, and it is frustrating because how can this stranger know more about your life than you do? Still, you end up letting yourself get whisked away to the bonfire, and the Latino elf is sitting with other children who share some of his features, eyes red and blotchy as he refuses to look at you. The blonde girl who rescued you on the flying chariot pats his shoulder before joining a group of kids who look almost identical to her. You look around the fire, no one there resembles you in the slightest.

Things get weird from there because you recite a prophecy in a language you didn’t know you knew. You’re given a prophecy yourself, and the only reassuring part of it is that kaleidoscope eyes and the tan boy volunteer to come with you. You wish you knew them, wished you remembered what they did so that you could understand why they would risk their lives for you. They still thought of you as their best friend, even if they knew you couldn’t return the sentiment.

The boy disappears into the woods, returning with a malfunctioning metal dragon dubbed Festus. All the other campers are putting distance between themselves and the dragon, but there is Leo, right beside the death machine, a goofy grin on his face as he stands proudly beside the thing. It's infectious, and you can’t help but smile along with him as the dragon dumps oil over the boy.

* * *

The not knowing how you know things doesn’t bother you as much as how Leo looks at Khione. He flirts with her, and you can feel the electricity under your skin hum, but you ignore it. He is allowed to like whomever he pleases, you have no right to feel any way about it either. The way Piper looks at you makes you feel guilty, but you ignore that too. You have a quest to complete and a goddess to save.

* * *

You can’t help but feel a little weird after the quest ends. You are slowly starting to remember more about yourself, about who you actually are, but Leo removes himself from your life. He works on his ship, the ship you are going to use to find Percy Jackson and save the world, and never seems to leave the Cabin 9 bunker. It feels weird, you miss him.

* * *

Piper looks at you like she knows a secret, and maybe she does, but you have no idea what it could be. You really wish you knew what it was. The way she looks at you when you’re with Leo makes your palms sweat and your neck flush. For some reason you always feel more self-conscious. If he notices he doesn’t say anything.

You slowly learn more about him. He only eats apples if he drowns them in peanut butter, he listens to Shakira when he thinks nobody else is around, he likes to sleep in your sweatpants. You notice he jokes a lot more when he is uncomfortable or nervous, that his fingers tap in Morse code even when he isn’t paying attention. He always has to be working on something, and it scares you that he might kill himself eventually because he goes nonstop.

You wish you knew him better, this Hispanic elf with fiery passion in his eyes, wished you remembered him the way he remembered you

You don’t notice how much he means to you until he is gone, blasted off Argo II by Khione. Everything hurts, and it feels like a piece of you is missing.

 _Leo is gone_ , and for the first time it really feels like the world is ending, the pain burning harsher than anything Gaea could throw your way.

* * *

When Leo comes back he is different. You aren’t sure if it is good or bad.

He makes jokes you don’t understand, turning to the side as if somebody was supposed to be there to laugh along with him. His face falls, and you feel parts of you breaking as you realize he’s not all there with you anymore, that someone else has pieces of him now.

He tells you about her. You don’t think he means to, he’s delirious and hasn’t slept in two days, but he _t_ _ells you about her_. You’re sitting with him, his eyes looking at something far away, something you can’t see. When you ask him what it is that he is searching for, what it is that he has lost, he answers Ogygia. He tells you about the sunshine he found there, about how he could have stayed forever, how he might have stayed there forever if not for the whole world ending situation. He whispers her name out into the night then, as if afraid saying it too loud will make his memories of her disappear. 

 _Calypso_.

* * *

The threat of Gaea is gone, and for a second you feel the relief of not having the weight of the world on your shoulders anymore. But Leo isn’t there, and you wonder if saving the world was worth saving if it would no longer have him in it.

You can’t even make yourself feel guilty for thinking that.

* * *

Leo is back once again, but this time he brought her with him. _Calypso_.

You stay distant from Leo at first, too afraid to approach him because he could disappear again at any given time. You don’t think you could stand to lose him another time. Somewhere between the first and last time you realized you may have loved him. Seeing him in front of you again, the first time in months, you know you do.

He’s like the sun, his laugh making you feel warm inside and you have to squint from the sheer brightness of his smile. His arm is thrown over the brunette’s shoulder and every now and then he diverts his full attention to her. You don’t think you have ever seen Leo so happy in the entire time you’ve known him.

* * *

You’ve managed to avoid Leo and Calypso for a week. You knew your luck would have to give out at some point, but you thought you could at least push two weeks before you inevitably ran into one of them. You silently wonder what god or goddess you must have pissed off to deserve this fate.

You run into Calypso first.

She’s nothing at all like how you imagined, not sweet or kind. She’s sharp and it’s uncomfortable to be around her because she gets straight to the point. When she looks at you it feels as though she is seeing right through you, the same way Piper seems to. You fidget under her gaze, trying to see the girl Percy described to you when you had asked about her after her arrival. You can’t.

“Don’t hurt him,” she finally says, breaking the silence. Your hands are sweaty, and it takes you a moment to process what she says. At that point she’s already walked quite a ways away from you, and you have to scramble after her.

“What?”

“You know what I mean Grace. Honestly, you blond half-bloods take everything good from me,” she grumbles, and then she’s gone. You're left behind, wondering what she meant.

* * *

_Oh_. This is what Calypso meant.

Leo is standing in your cabin, not meeting your eyes. He’s kicking the marble ground beneath him, and you still haven’t fully processed what he just said.

“You,” you pause, feeling like something in your brain is malfunctioning, “you like me?” His face flares up into a cherry red, and you feel your own cheeks heat up as well. He mumbles something he doesn’t want to hear, glancing between the floor and your face. He looks ready to bolt at any given minute, and your heart swells. He _l_ _ikes_  you. “Forgive me, you said you kinda maybe _l_ _ike_  me?” You tease, a small smile tugging at the corners of your mouth. You laugh as his head whips up towards you, fluent Spanish flying off of his tongue.

He tries to push you over, and you grab his hands, cupping them in your own. He watches you cautiously as you bring them up to your lips, pressing a gentle kiss to his knuckles. He jolts, and you know he can feel the electricity in your touch. “I guess it is a good thing I kinda maybe _like_  you too, Leo Valdez.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i'm not exactly sure how i feel about this, but here you go. as i stated before, i have not finished the series, so certain parts of it i am not familiar with. a part of this includes calypso and most of the gaea business. oh well, i hope this satisfies anyone, sorry if it is so far off that it isn't enjoyable to you.  
> as always, un-beta'd, so feel free to leave any corrections for me if you see anything that bothers you.  
> little personal info, college has been kicking my ass (i had 4 exams last week and 1 this week) and the next FOUR chapters of Leo the Love Mechanic somehow vanished from my onedrive (along with one of my labs) and everything has kind of sucked. luckily i had this saved through my other email's onedrive, so this managed to survive. i'm not even sure i like it anymore. i'm just kinda, i don't know. i feel like i need to redo everything because i can't even remember where i was in ltlm and i'm just really sad, but whatever. off of my self pitying soap box now.

**Author's Note:**

> part two continues in second person and picks up around where this let off/fills in some of the missing parts from Jason's perspective  
> i haven't actually read all of the HoO series, shame on me. i read the first two books when they came out, but i haven't finished the final few in the series. i've recently started re-reading in my free time though! i have been major spoilered, so i know that Leo dies, but i don't know how or anything like that, so i'm doing this story to the best of my abilities without ruining the series for me. forgive me if anything is seriously inaccurate in comparison to the actual series.  
> as always, unbeta'd and written fast, so feel free to correct me on any grammatical or spelling errors you happen to see.


End file.
